For the first post in this series about the proprioceptive system, click here.
What is the vestibular system?
The vestibular system works out of your inner ear, and provides information about balance in relation to gravity. This system works closely with your visual system to coordinate your eye movements along with your head movements, as well as your reflexes. These three work together to ensure that you do not fall. There are two types of vestibular movement: rotary and linear.
The way that many therapists can analyze a child's vestibular processing system is through watching the eye movements after a child has been spun in circles. The eyes move in the opposite direction of your head to maintain balance, which is called your vestibular-ocular reflex. When you have vertigo, an ear infection, motion sickness, this affects the vestibular processing system.
When you see little kids spinning in circles, this activates the vestibular system, and provides intensive sensory input. The vestibular system is typically "energizing" for individuals (think of going on a swing or a roller coaster), but too much of this input can result in a child seem "out of control" and have a hard time focusing.
How can we use the vestibular and proprioceptive systems in unison?
The proprioceptive system is calming, organizing, and regulating. I think of it as a way to "ground" our bodies. If we want a child to calm down and pay attention in school, we can provide this type of input in order to prepare the child to focus.
If a child is low energy and off in his or her own world, we use the vestibular system to "wake up" the brain and provide it with an appropriate level of arousal to engage with the world around it.
In therapy sessions, both proprioceptive and vestibular inputs are used to elicit an optimal state of arousal for a child who has challenges with sensory processing, so that he or she can participate in the environment more effectively.
While these past two posts have just been introductions to the two very important sensory systems, if you have any questions please comment on this post or contact me from the home page and I would be happy to expand.
Photo by Oneisha Lee on Unsplash
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